


The Game of Kings

by sinnerman



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-03 23:58:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1760163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinnerman/pseuds/sinnerman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU where certain things are changed.  And if anyone thinks that Charles would never do this, I offer Onslaught as evidence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Game of Kings

My husband, Erik.  He is my lover, and my best friend.  He is everything to me.  And he is the key to controlling me at the moment.

The first guard is clutching the syringe as if it were a pistol.  I can see the terror in the whiteness of his knuckles, even if I can’t sense it.  Thanks to their hideous helmets, I can’t sense anything from the guards, or that bastard Stryker who is overseeing everything from behind the safety of the heavily leaded glass separating him from me.  I look up at him, but Erik sees the movement.

“Charles.  Don’t.”  His voice is soft.  He is shaking.  But he is more worried about me than he is afraid for his own life.  And I, of course, am feeling just the opposite.

It is a hellish trap.  If he misses the second dose - the one in the guard’s hand - he will die.  I will do many things for vengeance, but I will not be the thing that causes Erik’s death.  And I will not be able to reach him in time.

I look at Erik again, instead.  Has he always been this handsome?  Or is it the slight furrow in that magnificent brow - the sign of his worry and his concern for me - is that what makes him so much more attractive today?  Or is it the realization that this is the last time I will see him for a long time?  I want to smile at him, but I can’t.  I want to kiss him too badly, and I can’t do that either.

“Charles….”  The way he says my name cuts me like a knife.  His is the only mind that I can reach now.  He refused to wear the deforming lead helmet.  Without meaning to, I reach out for him.  It is partly panic, partly despair, and partly because that is where my mind has always gone to rest.  It is habit.  He is upset - terrified - this is not what he wanted, but he cannot find another way out.  Something must be done to stop the terrifying Professor X, but he is still unconvinced that I am really the ruthless mutant leader of the anti-human movement.  My poor Erik.  He is torn, between faith in the love he has for me and the trust he has in the government.  After all, they saved him from the monsters that would have destroyed him.  But he is horrified, not that they arrested me, but the way they are doing it.  Locking me away without a trial, in a cage specially made just for me.  My poor, dear Erik.

And now I can smile, because I am amused and my beloved has given me a glimpse of hope.  Hope that when I escape, he will stand with me at the last.

I sense it now - a sharp stab of fear.  I know the taste of Stryker’s mind.  I glance up again, quickly.  Yes, I can see the rogue soldier’s mop of dark hair.  He pulled off the helmet because it was too hot, and he quickly scrambles to put it back on.  More orders are barked, but I do nothing and go back to looking at Erik again.  Tears, now, from those glorious blue eyes.  He is teetering on the edge, slowly becoming more and more afraid that he will never see me again.

“Charles,” he says desperately.  He is wondering if there was another way, some step that he missed.  Fearful that all this mess is his fault.

I smile warmly at him, but I won’t speak yet.  Not with Stryker hovering in his spastic, easily startled panic.  Nor can I reach out to take his hand, not with the restraints tying me to this chair.  But I can - and do - brush his mind with just the lightest touch, a soft wave that barely reflects the torrent of love that I feel for this man.  He senses it, and is quieted.  Almost stunned.  He never realized that the sudden flood of love in his mind was me, and now he is going back over every time I have silently told him how much I love him.

“Lock him up,” shouts Stryker urgently.  My calm is irritating him and making him fearful.  He enjoyed watching my horror while he unfolded how he was going to use Erik to keep me quiescent so they could lock me up.  I didn’t need to to be a telepath to know that.  His sadism is obvious.  He wants to see me squirm.  He wants to see me humbled.

I keep my eyes on Erik as the powered chair they gave me slowly rolls backwards into my new home in the Pentagon, courtesy of Trask Industries. Under the Pentagon, rather.  Lead-lined walls and leaded glass, with computerized cameras covering every door that will set off alarms if any of the guards deviate from the set routine.  Stryker gloated about the prison for quite some time.  They put a lot of thought into how to keep a telepath under control.

The heavy steel doors slam shut just as Erik collapses under the strain.  It is the last thing I see.  My Erik, fainting and terrified.

I take a deep breath, forcing myself to stay calm.  I know that Stryker will get him medical attention immediately.  They need Erik alive, in case they need to open that door before Trask is ready to start his experiments on me.  I look around the room.  The bed is part of the wall.  There are clean sheets and a thin pillow.  One small desk with some papers on it.  A bathroom.  A large monitor.  Four cameras watching my every move.

Stryker needs to learn about personal boundaries.

The monitor turns on with a loud pop.  “Well, Dr. Xavier?  Do you have any requests?”  Stryker’s smug face fills the screen, and I can feel that sudden rush of dark hatred that is getting harder and harder to force down.

I force myself to to think of Erik, and not of how much I will enjoy watching Stryker and Trask twist in agony someday.  “Erik.”

“He’s fine,” says Stryker, oozing false compassion.  “He recovered, and we administered the antidotes.  He’s heading back to the estate.”  Stryker smiles wryly, irritated and trying to hide it.  The helmet he wears is ugly, but still effective.  But I don’t need my powers to read his face.  “That was a cruel trick, by the way.  It seems your setup is bulletproof, after all.  The Department of Justice has advised us to leave your Foundation alone.  So that’s score one for you, Dr. Xavier.”

Stryker is an unbelievable asshole, and I will not give him the satisfaction of thinking that he has affected me with the joke about bullets.  “I paid for the best.  Besides, dismantling the Xavier Foundation would set an awful precedent.”  I look down at my hands, still secure in their restraints.  “Were you going to send someone in to untie me, Major Stryker?”

His face twists, a wide gloating smile, then he recovers himself.  “I hadn’t thought about it.  Maybe we can work something out?  I’d hate to have to call Mr. Lehnserr back so quickly.”

“And these cameras,” I look around with my head, but my eyes are watching him.  His eyes flicker as he watches me, and I can see that I missed at least one somewhere.  “I want them off.”

“No, no, Dr. Xavier,” he says sternly.  “We can’t trust you yet.”

That actually makes me laugh.  “Major Stryker, you will never be able to trust me.  And I am quite happy about that.”

The man behind him grabs his collar nervously.  Uncomfortably warm.  I don’t bother looking at him.  He is still wearing the helmet, as they all are.  Desperate for some sort of protection from the monster they have trapped here.

“Now, now,” Stryker laughs.  Patronizing and confident.  “All you have to do is promise to play nicely, and we can get those restraints off.  Otherwise, we will call Mr. Lehnserr back to keep you in line.”  He finally notices the technician behind him, who is now sweating heavily and panting slightly.  “Smith?  Are you - ”  That moment of terror as he looks at me, sees the small half-smile, then back at the panicking technician.  “What are you doing, Dr. Xavier?”

I put on my most innocent, hurt look.  “Me, Major Stryker?  I think something is wrong with your employee.  You should probably do something about that.”  I watch with open interest as medics rush in to deal with the man, who is suffering from some kind of heat stroke.  And while everyone is watching the man flailing helplessly as his brain slowly boils in his skull, I am carefully undoing the restraints with my mind so that they will fall away with slightest pressure.

Something beeps in Stryker’s command center, but he doesn’t stop to check it.  Instead, he rushes out with the medics and the stretcher.  The remaining technicians look at each nervously, and one of them leans over to turn off the monitor.  I can no longer see them.  So they have a slight advantage, now.  They can see me, but I can’t see them.  But I still know where they are.

The helmets muffle the noise, but they still have ‘sounds.’  I can sense the presence of the guards outside my door, when they get close enough.

The chair whirrs to life, responding to a remote summons, and moves me across the room.  In theory, out of reach, so they can open the door in safety.  But I can sense the muted essence of Stryker’s mind behind that door.  The door was a mistake, in Trask’s grand plan.  Or possibly Stryker altered it without telling him.  Trask is usually so careful.

The door is steel, with only a slight layer of lead.

The metal begins moving back, to allow Stryker to walk in.  The crack is enough.  I can sense Erik again - Stryker was telling the truth.  My Erik is in one of the Xavier Foundation limousines, heading home.  Raven is driving.

I let go a breath I didn’t know I was holding.  Erik is safe.  I can trust Raven to protect him against anything Stryker might have sent to follow them.

“Your manners are appalling, Major Stryker.  You didn’t even knock.”  I can hear him gasp, and I see his hand twitch nervously.  He half-turns away, to start giving an order.

“The g-”

That’s all I let him get out before ripping the heavy steel door from its hinges.  It’s almost too heavy for me at first, but as always, my mind adapts before I have even finished the thought.  Trask wouldn’t have made this mistake.  Trask knows that he didn’t understand my powers, and he wisely fears me for that.  But Stryker was too eager to show off his power over me, to prove his pure human ingenuity surpassing my mutations.  I am looking forward to killing Stryker much more than I should.

No wonder Erik was afraid.

My mind warps and twists the door, popping the obnoxious lead covering away, and then dropping the metal like a club, crushing the guards like a crude paste.  Only Stryker is spared.  One blow to send his helmet flying, then another to knock him to the ground while the other guards are dealt with.  Then he stands up, picks up the helmet, and walks it over to me, his mind a complete blank while I move him around like a puppet.  I carefully slide my hands out from under the restraints, trying not to ruin it so that I can pretend to be tied up again in a few minutes.  I take the helmet and it is the work of a few seconds to rip away the lead lining.  I hand it back to him so that he can put it on again and now my puppet - apparently in complete control of himself - guides my wheelchair out of the cage.  The people in the little viewing room upstairs are all having seizures as their brains melt.

And now I am ready to begin work.  “Let’s go, Major Stryker.”  My puppet is going to take me to Trask’s latest monstrosity: a supercomputer for tracking and analyzing mutants.  This is what they wanted to hook me up to.  My research in Stryker’s mind makes me almost reluctant to destroy it.  This Cerebro device looks like an amazing thing.  Now I wonder if it is possible to simply take it with me.


End file.
